A Coherent Framework

for the Study of

Public Administration
Jos C.N. Raadschelders
University of Oklahoma

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ABSTRACT

The identity crisis of public administration, discussed on

both sides of the Atlantic since the Second World War, is a
debate about both its academic stature and its relevance to
society. American students of Public Administration, who are
rooted in a practical approach, have time and again addressed
this issue by stating the need for a comprehensive theory that
would unify the study. Some even have suggested ways to achieve
that happy state of coherence and unification through either
pointing to the accumulative quality of research (e.g., "from
miniparadigms to ") or advocating for a central demarcating con-
cept (e.g., "association"). The American approach to the identity
crisis, which is generally inductive, stands in sharp contrast to the
continental-European approach, which is generally deductive.
Can we be content with the fact that public administration is
essentially multidisciplinary and maybe interdisciplinary, or
should we continue to strive for a comprehensive theory ? This
article is intended to fuel the ongoing discussion about the
I would like to thank Marie-Louise identity crisis; it presents a metatheoretical solution that
as
Bemeimans-videc, Aris van Braam, Theo transcends practical, deductive approach as well inductive
P.C.M. Jochoms, Richard J. Stillman, nnnroachp<;
James F. Wolf, and anonymous reviewers ^"
for their insightful comments upon earlier
versions of this article. I would like to Even in 1948 there were still fairly distinct national academic traditions of
thank James L. Perry for his suggestions public administration that touched only slightly: a continental European
of relevant literature. This article is tradition focusing on the legal analysis of the use of public power, a British
written as a contribution to a research tradition of pragmatic analysis based mainly on history and philosophy, and
project, "The Renaissance of Public a n A m e r i c a n tradition with more ambitions to "science." (Hood 1990, 6)
Administration. An Interdisciplinary
Project on the Foundations of Administra- .
uve Thought," which is directed by Mark On both sides of the Atlantic the study of Public Admimstra-
R. Rutgers, whom i thank for the contin- tion has experienced a crisis of identity since the end of the
uous and enthusiastic discussions we have Second World War. From a purely academic point of view the
about this and other topics. c r i s i s c o n c e m e d Ae q U e s t i o n : I s p u b i i c administration a unified,
7-P/4i?r9n999V2 281-303 coherent study sufficiently independent from other studies? That

281/'Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

The Study of Public Administration

the identity crisis can be regarded as threatening to the existential

foundation of society is a more recent observation.

Lorenz von Stein (1815-1890) was the last scholar who

attempted to present the study of Public Administration as a
coherent and unified discipline (Rutgers 1994). He created his
Verwaltungslehre (1865-66 and 1887-88) at a crossroads in time.
The Atlantic Revolutions of the 1780-1820 period had laid the
ideological foundations for the expansion of government.

The actual growth of government in terms of services, per-

sonnel, and expenditure had already started. Some of von Stein's
contemporaries in both America and Europe were aware—if only

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intuitively—that governance was about to become intertwined
with society to an unprecedented degree. These same contempo-
raries were most concerned with understanding the ideological
and political implications of the American Revolution and the
French Revolution. In the middle of the nineteenth century, some
major issues were equality before the law and thus universal
suffrage; human rights and the balance between collective respon-
sibility and individual freedom; a restraint on government inter-
vention for the protection of brotherhood; and a man-made con-
stitution as a founding document for governance. Alexis de
Tocqueville was as intrigued with America's checks-and-balances
as Voltaire (in exile) had been with English civil rights a century
earlier. The Englishman John Stuart Mill stood upon die shoul-
ders of Condorcet and Jeremy Bentham when he advocated social
democracy and universal suffrage. And finally, the almost for-
gotten American, Duganne, heralded liberal-capitalist society and
government as the pinnacle of civilization 130 years before
Fukuyama (Raadschelders 1997).

The growth of government initiated much academic atten-

tion, especially in the study of state and administrative law, both
in Europe and in the United States (Hurst 1977, 33-37). Public
Administration as a separate study emerged in the early twentieth
century. Its proliferation after the Second World War made any
attempt to create a unified discipline a la von Stein very difficult,
to say the least. It generated an academic identity crisis. This
identity crisis now is compounded by crisis in the practical
sphere of the public service, of public opinion, and of public
attitude. In response to worldwide privatization, so Haque argued
(1996, 513), the practice of public administration (hence govern-
ment) is now hurled into a credibility, a normative, and a confi-
dence crisis. Following Waldo, I will use upper case to refer to
the study, Public Administration, whereas for the practice I will
simply use public administration or government.

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The Study of Public Administration

In this article, I will briefly review and characterize the

nature of the crisis in Public Administration in the United States
and in Western Europe (section 2). I will argue that the study of
Public Administration can be organized coherently around the
core of its subject. Following the identification of the core
functions of government (section 3), I will present the topics of
Public Administration as a study (sections 4 and 5). The implica-
tions of the framework will be discussed briefly in section 6.

THE NATURE OF THE INTELLECTUAL CRISIS

IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

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In his introduction to the second edition of The Adminis-
trative State, Dwight Waldo indicated that Public Administration
in the postwar period had found new foci and disciplines, in
addition to political science, that were relevant to its subject of
study. These included social psychology, economics, sociology,
and business administration (Waldo 1984, liv). He had argued
previously that the nature and boundaries of the study were prob-
lematical (Waldo 1968, 5), and he suggested that public adminis-
tration ought to be pursued from a "professional perspective"
(p. 9). Using Kuhn's terminology, Vincent Ostrom (1974, 14;
18) argued that Public Administration faced a paradigmatic crisis
because of the proliferation of prevailing theories, the methodo-
logical experimentation, the explicit discontent among scholars,
the large amount of philosophical speculation, and the debate
surrounding fundamental epistemological issues. Ostrom's solu-
tion was to develop Public Administration as a science of associ-
ation. Golembiewski (1977a and b) has suggested that the disci-
pline of Public Administration ought to be developed by means of
a "family of miniparadigms" such as organizational development.
In a review of Public Administration research Perry and Kraemer
(1986, 221) considered Fritz Mosher's remark of thirty years
earlier still relevant:

The field has not channeled its research efforts; its scope of interest seems
unlimited; it has not developed a rigorous methodology; it has been pretty
blase about definitions; it has not agreed on any paradigms or theorems or
theoretical systems; it has not settled on any stylized jargon or symbols;
with a very few experimental exceptions, the field has not been modeled or
mathematized into an "adminimetrics."

Since 1986, the crisis of identity has been the subject of a series
of articles (Box 1992; Houston amd Delevan 1990; Stallings and
Ferris 1988; White, Adams, and Forrester 1996). The crisis has
not been limited to the United States; it also has been reported on
a smaller scale on the European continent.

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The Study of Public Administration

Rhodes, Dargie, Melville, and Tutt (1995) opened their

review of twenty-five years (1970-1995) of Public Administration
in Britain with this playful remark, borrowed from Waldo:

Public administration suffers from so many "crises of identity" that normal

adolescence seems idyllic.

Before 1970, Rhodes argued, British public administration was

atheoretical, historical, and focused on administrative engineering
(Hood 1990, 6; Rhodes 1996, 508). Since then the British have
turned their attention more and more toward organization theory,
policy analysis, state theory, rational choice, and public manage-
ment. Chevallier (1996, 69) wrote that in the 1960s the legal, the

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managerial, and the sociological models in which Public Admin-
istration was grounded in France were tearing the study apart.
While he reported that this period of doubt had come to an end
by the late 1980s, thanks to the emerging "paradigm" [sic] of
public policy, he concluded that Public Administration would
remain wedged between legal dogma, public management theory,
and political science, and thus it would continue to have difficulty
staking an exclusive claim to its subject of interest (p. 70). With
respect to Germany, methodological and theoretical weakness
have been mentioned, although the identity of Public Adminis-
tration was rooted in its legitimacy as a study of and for reform
(Seibel 1996, 78). In this respect German Public Administration
is reminiscent of the roots of American Public Administration
around the turn of the century. In the Scandinavian countries
(Beck Jorgenson 1996) and the Netherlands (Kickert 1996), an
identity crisis existed as well, which was, as elsewhere, related to
the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of the study. The Dutch
emeritus Van Braam recently (1998) observed that the scientific
authority of Public Administration will continue to be seriously
challenged as long as we cannot agree on the core that constitutes
the study. While for practical reasons many accept the coexis-
tence of various core concepts, Van Braam argues—more
strongly than Perry—that such will not lead to a coherent and
theoretically unified study (p. 49).

In both the United States and in Europe, Public Administra-

tion suffers from the idea that its representatives are not able to
gather all research and theory together in a coherent and unified
body of knowledge.

The label identity crisis is a generic term that refers to two

main types of crisis: First, the academic crisis, which concerns
both the study of Public Administration and the practice of public
administration/government. This can be seen from many perspec-
tives: the lack of attention to the roots of American government

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The Study of Public Administration

(e.g., Ostrom 1974); the theoretical and methodological weakness

(e.g., Perry and Kraemer 1986; Seibel 1996; Van Braam 1998;
White, Adams, and Forrester 1996); the controversy over the
epistemological status of the discipline (e.g., Chevallier 1996);
the breathless pursuit of fads and fashions in both the study and
the practice (e.g. Rhodes et al. 1995); the emphasis of practice at
the expense of academic inquiry (see also Haque 1996, 511). We
also see the discipline's lack of responsiveness to the needs of the
actors in the practice (Denhardt 1984, 150) and the need for new
foundations in governance, in constitutionalism, and in the
philosophy of pragmatism (e.g., Wamsley et al. 1990; Wamsley
and Wolf 1996).

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Second, existential crisis, which also concerns both the
practice of public administration and the study of Public Admin-
istration/government. This is a crisis in the "lived world" of
government officials, of citizens, of PA academics, and so forth.
Some believe that Public Administration has achieved moral
authority by serving citizens despite the weak scientific authority
of the study (Perry 1991, 15). Haque (1996, 512-13) argues that
the existential foundation of government in society remained
fairly strong for decades, but the practice of public administration
now faces a different crisis, which influences the legitimacy,
ethics, and morale of the public service. He distinguishes a
credibility crisis (i.e., diminishing demand for and unfavorable
public attitude toward the practice), a normative crisis (i.e.,
gradual displacement of basic public norms of public administra-
tion by market norms of private management), and a confidence
crisis (i.e., loss of professional confidence and commitment
among scholars of public administration). Haque's analysis cer-
tainly strikes a chord, but in the end it does not entirely con-
vince. Since the time that the concept of bureaucracy was coined
(mid-1700s), credibility crises have occurred regularly, especially
during economic recession. As for the normative crisis, suffice it
to say that public and market norms compete, and neither can
completely displace the other. Furthermore, the growing attention
to public ethics and public law suggests a normative crisis of
quite a different order. Finally, with regard to the confidence
crisis, every true scholar will doubt his own convictions. Waldo
said it: "My rearing and education disposed me to the soft side;
to a humanist approach to social science and to a suspicion of all
philosophies and methods that offered Truth" (1984, xliv).

The above can be summarized in the following manner (see

exhibit 1). From an academic point of view the crisis of the
practice concerns the question, What exactly is public administra-
tion? How is public administration demarcated from the private
sector and how is it situated between state and society? What

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The Study of Public Administration

differentiates public administration from other societal (groups of)

organizations? With respect to the study of Public Administra-
tion, the academic crisis concerns the epistemological basis of the
study. How can we acquire knowledge about public organiza-
tions? How can we, for instance, relate organizational theories to
public organizations? How can we relate our theories about
human action to the practice of governing? And the most deadly
question of all: To what extent is our knowledge scientific or
interpretative? The existential crisis in the practice of public
administration is concerned basically with the moral authority of
government, while the existential crisis in the study wonders
whether or not Public Administration is an independent discipline
(versus political science, business administration, and so forth).

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This article focuses mainly on the academic crisis in the study of
Public Administration.

Public Administration in Europe did have its identity crisis,

but it was considered less problematic. After von Stein, European
Public Administration was predominantly a legal study (Rutgers
1997, 290). It was only after the Second World War that other
disciplinary perspectives entered the study. The French, the
Germans, the Italians, the Dutch, and the Scandinavians devel-
oped a conception of Public Administration with its intellectual
roots in philosophy, law, sociology, economics, political science,
history, and so forth. From a practical point of view European
public administration is rooted in a strong state tradition, contrary
to public administration in the United States, and that too influ-
enced the outlook of the study. Nevertheless, this multidiscipli-
narity of the study puzzled European scholars. In the United
States, this recognition was less pronounced in the post-World
War II era, although a few saw it clearly (Waldo 1984). The
debate about multidisciplinarity on either side of the Atlantic did
not—and I would argue could not—lead to satisfactory conclu-
sion. The reason is simple and twofold: first, as a study Public
Administration always will have to balance the demands of the
academic and of the societal community (as any academic study
related to a profession must); second, as a study it must draw
upon a variety of approaches to this phenomenon called public
administration or government. It is because of this second obser-
vation that some have argued that Public Administration is and
cannot be anything but a differentiated study and that continuous
crisis is, in fact, its identity (Rutgers 1998). I concur with this
position. It implies that at the level of specific theories one may
encounter a variety of (opposing) theories, hence a heterogeneous
study, while at the metalevel a comprehensive framework (i.e.,
integrative framework) can be constructed in which the rich
variety of available theories is related (Rutgers 1998).

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Exhibit 1
The Identity Crisis of P(p)ublic A(a)dministration

public administration Public Administration

Academic -how to define public -epistemological basis of

crisis administration (and dis- the study;
tinguish it from private -how to acquire knowledge;
and politics); -is our knowledge scientific
-what is the position of or interpretative?
public administration
between state and society?

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Existential -lack of moral authority -discipline among others
crisis or subdiscipline within
(e.g., political science,
business administration, law)

For the purpose of this article, it is sufficient to roughly

outline the differences between Anglo-American and continental-
European approaches to Public Administration. While students of
government in continental Europe generally appear to favor tax-
onomy over essay and definition over illustration (e.g., Debbasch
1989; Van Braam 1986), their Anglo-American counterparts opt
for exactly the opposite. Not that definition and taxonomy do not
count in Britain or America, but their starting point of analysis is
practical. By way of generalization, we could also say that Public
Administration in continental Europe used theory as the starting
point, while in Britain and America it used practice as the start-
ing point for the organization of the discipline. This has at least
one important consequence for attempts to structure the study.
European scholars will usually adopt a deductive approach,
organizing the discipline around and developing it from a theory
or one or a few core concepts and then position "administrative
reality" into it (e.g., Van Braam 1986; Debbasch 1989). In
Anglo-American literature, on the other hand, the inductive
approach prevails (see Stillman 1997, 334) in an attempt to create
an encompassing framework on the basis of every concept in use.

In any attempt to structure the study, one would have to

look at the merits of the deductive and inductive approaches. I
would opt for a combination that departs from a core index of
topics, not a set of core concepts, an empirical body of knowl-
edge—a catalogue—that transcends

• the more or less circumstantial differences between national

or even world-regional approaches, as well as

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The Study of Public Administration

• the variety of disciplinary backgrounds and approaches.

In organizing the study of Public Administration, we ought

to consider what government is and reflect about its core func-
tions. It is from this basis that we can start to develop a coherent
study of Public Administration. This article thus transcends the
practical (Anglo-American) and deductive (continental European)
approaches.

THE CORE FUNCTIONS OF P(p)UBLIC

A(a)DMINISTRATION:
GOVERNMENT AND GOVERNANCE

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The intrinsic function of public administration is the
governance of society. Public administration exists to realize the
governance of society. The purpose of public administration is to
govern, and thus government and governance are the core con-
cepts that help us to organize the study of Public Administration.
Governments exist because they have the resources to translate
the citizens' needs into collective action. Whatever era or area,
citizens had some kind of government. A government will con-
tinue to exist for an undetermined period of time only if it is able
to meet the most basic expectations of its population. However,
citizens in Ancient Egypt held different expectations of their
government than did their counterparts in early twentieth century
democracies, and, surely, citizens of the Central and Eastern
European countries hold quite different expectations of their
governments than do their contemporaries in the United States
and in other late twentieth century democracies. Ultimately
governance is not solely a top-down issue, much as the ruling
elites would like to believe. They are aware that they will at
some point either need to address citizens' needs or run the risk
of losing power.

At least four important issues must be taken into considera-

tion. First, what government should be changes over time, and so
the substance of our object of study changes. This means that the
practice of public administration and the study of Public Admin-
istration will, time and again, have to reexamine their normative
foundations. Second, what government should be varies from
country to country. American government is clearly different
from English, French, German, Japanese, or Dutch government.
Third, what government should be varies according to disci-
plinary background of its students, as Rohrbaugh and Andersen
(1997, 186) reminded us. Fourth, what government ought to be
also depends upon the position and the perception of the inhabi-
tants within a territory. We can assume that citizens at large,
business elites, political and administrative elites, clerics, and so

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forth hold different opinions about this. However, whatever

government should be, its legitimacy in any era or area rests with
the swiftness and adequacy of its response to changing environ-
mental conditions.

What combines these four issues is this basic question: What

does public and what does administration actually stand for in the
concept of public administration! Deciding that, if such is pos-
sible, is in itself a moral issue. I am not so much concerned here
with the public in terms of the people, but with what is the public
domain in terms of collective or general interest. Public adminis-
tration cannot be defined by its publicness or by its administra-

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tiveness solely. The use of government and governance as core
concepts, however, does not push the publicness nor the adminis-
trativeness to the background.

According to many, what we need is a concept that demar-

cates Public Administration from other social sciences. One angle
suggested is based on the fact that a given population is able to
associate for and organize collective action on a voluntary basis.
Some argue that this is only realistic for small groups (e.g.,
Hardin 1968; Olson 1965), while others argue to the contrary
(e.g., Ostrom 1974). Indeed, in the view of Ostrom (p. 107)
public administration should be a science of association. While
this is a democratic perspective, collective action on the basis of
more or less voluntary associations rests upon too many neces-
sary conditions for its realization to be a certainty. Since a
science of association is relevant to all associations—not just
public organizations—and hence relevant to all social sciences, it
cannot demarcate Public Administration from other disciplines.
Other organizing concepts such as power, authority, manage-
ment, communication, and coordination suffer equally from the
failure to demarcate Public Administration from other social
sciences.

Instead we need a core that takes government as a starting

point, and from that we can identify a study of Public Adminis-
tration. Would government be such a useful concept for demar-
cating Public Administration? Economists, political scientists,
social psychologists, organizational sociologists, and so forth, all
study government. Their point of departure, however, is not
government itself, but rather particular aspects of human behav-
ior within a government context. A scholar of Public Administra-
tion would seek to link the findings in these various approaches
in order to arrive at more complete understanding of government.

Hence, I am not looking for a demarcating and unifying

concept. We certainly should not do so for organizational (i.e.,

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independence from political science) and financial considerations

(why fund the study if it has no independent standing). Instead I
advocate the use of an organizing concept that helps us to iden-
tify the various topics that are relevant to public administration/
government and thus ought to be part of a Public Administration
curriculum.

What legitimizes government, the swiftness and adequacy of

response to citizen demand and changing environmental circum-
stances, is expressed best in the ability to make adequate public
and binding decisions about matters of a collective nature.
Indeed, the notion of the public provides more than just an
educational focus, as Ventriss reminded us (1991, 11). In both

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North America and Europe, as I imagine elsewhere, government
is empowered to make public decisions that will have bearing
upon (hence, are binding for) both public and private actors even
though the perimeters for collective action are set by government
as well as by the citizenry, the industry, the interest groups, and
so forth.

I would agree with Simon (1957) that the core function of

government is making public decisions at various levels and
degrees of governance about collective actions that affect the
public and private spheres of society as a whole. Government has
the authority to make public decisions and to impose these deci-
sions upon members of society. The core function of government
is public decision making (from preparation, to implementation,
to monitoring) at the level (understood in terms of tier of
government) and at the degree (in terms of intensity of govern-
ment intervention) considered appropriate and morally acceptable
at a given time. What the appropriate level should be changes
from time to time, testifying to this continuous balancing between
centralization and decentralization, unification and fragmentation,
nationalization and marketization, which are forces characteristic
of any society at any given time. With the core activity (i.e.,
decisions), and the levels and the nature identified as the core of
public administration, we can raise the following questions:

• About what are public decisions made?

• Who makes public decisions and who is involved in public
decision making?
• Why are public decisions made?
• How are public decisions implemented?

I address each of these questions briefly; they can be discussed

only in general terms in the context of an article. Any attempt to
provide detail to each of these questions will fall short of my

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intention, which concerns the larger picture of the study of Public

Administration, not the variety of possible approaches. Instead of
seeking to create a unifying study through a theoretical and
methodological approach, the nature of the study of Public
Administration almost forces us to organize it based on what we
believe constitutes governance (the metalevel). In the process we
may be better able to understand the variety of approaches to this
study, on sides of the Atlantic.

FOUR BASIC QUADRANTS

The four questions above represent four quadrants around

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the core of the study of Public Administration (see exhibit 2).
The most basic question we can ask is, What is public adminis-
tration? Derived from that we also ask, Where are public deci-
sions about collective issues made? It is important to emphasize
that in the case of Public Administration, we need to identify the
core before we can map the study. We simply will not succeed in
mapping the study if we take one of its major foci (as Golem-
biewski's miniparadigms suggest) or one of its possible
approaches/concepts (Ostrom's angle) nor if we ignore one
among many foci and approaches, because that would always
place some topics and approaches above others.

The inner circle of each quadrant represents pure theory

(i.e., literature with an emphasis on theory), in each of which
three elements are analytically distinguished. These elements are
distinguishable, yet indivisible. Each would not make much sense
without the others. The outer ring represents theory as it springs
from empirical research. It departs from the pure theory in the
inner ring, and its conclusions will have consequences for that
same pure theory. The three elements in the outer ring of each
quadrant are divided because each represents multiple theories of
its own. In each of these, scholars (not necessarily within Public
Administration) have made a name without necessarily being con-
cerned with the larger picture. Hence, if Public Administration
suffers from an identity crisis, it is because we all tend to focus
on a manageable portion of our object of study and generalize
our findings into an encompassing body of theory.

The First Quadrant (output: what)

The first quadrant is concerned with this question, About

what are public decisions made? Basically we make decisions
within the existing arrangements for the foundations, the proceed-
ings, and the actions of government and governance and some-
times also about these arrangements themselves. Among the core
theories (la, lb, and lc) in which these three are connected is

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Exhibit 2
Public Administration as a Body of Knowledge

Q Law & Justice

Judiciary 1
Inspection agencies, What
Charity etc.
Welfare
Organization
Budgetary process
Process
Service provision
Coordination
B Development

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aid, etc.

Policy
Army
Implementation
Police
Evaluation
Education,
Communication
etc.
What is
Public
Administration? Political
officeholders Political parties
History Parliament
Heritage Leadership
Representation,
Civil b
etc.
\ servants
\
Civil Service
Cost-benefit Recruitment B
Rational behavior Career, HRM
"Managerial" Representativeness,
philosophy etc.
Equality
Legality Unions
"Public" philosophy Associations
Civicness, etc. Interest groups
Citizens, etc.

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the one that is widely known as the levels of choice and levels of
rules (Kiser and Ostrom 1982). If we focus on the level of foun-
dations, the empirical-theoretical work in the section 1A of the
outer ring is concerned with constitution (e.g., Lane 1996). The
proceedings or process-section IB in the outer ring represents
research on the frames within which these decisions are made:
organizations (e.g., Blau and Schoenherr 1971; Gulick 1937;
Meyer 1979). Also important are the ways in which these deci-
sions are communicated (e.g., Garnett and Kouzmin 1997) and
coordinated. The third element in the outer ring concerns all
research on policy implementation and evaluation (1C [e.g.,
Pressman and Wildavsky 1973]).

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The Second Quadrant (input: who)

Once we are down to the action level the question emerges,

Who makes and who is involved in these what decisions? The
inner ring of the second quadrant represents pure theory about
iron triangles, networks, and so forth (2a, 2b, and 2c [e.g.,
Heclo 1978]). It is in this type of theory that the three main
actors in governance are intricately linked: political officeholders,
civil servants or bureaucrats, and corporations, the last being a
generic term to describe the amalgam of unions, citizens' associa-
tions, interest groups, the business community, and so forth. In
the outer ring the three sections represent separate bodies of
empirical work (2A, 2B, and 2C). Section 2A comprises research
in the field of political parties, parliament, elections, leaders of
government, issues of political representation. Section 2B con-
tains all research in the field of bureaucracy as a civil service:
training, recruitment, representativeness, careers (e.g., Bekke,
Perry, and Toonen 1996), human resource management (e.g.,
Colling 1997; Hays and Kearney 1995; Nigro and Nigro 1986),
and also their assumed tendency to aggrandize their own impor-
tance (e.g., Downs 1967) or their influence/power over politics
(e.g., Page 1992). Sections 2A and 2B are connected in the topic
of political-administrative relations (e.g., Aberbach, Putnam, and
Rockman 1981). Section 2C concerns all research about the influ-
ence of individual citizens (e.g., through referenda, participation
on boards, and so forth) as well as organized segments of society
upon public decision making (e.g., Peters 1989). Section 2C is,
of course, also linked to sections 2A and 2B.

The Third Quadrant (input: why)

From this we can move almost automatically to ask what

propels these three (groups of) actors into making decisions. Why
are public decisions made? Here we need not be concerned with
immediate action upon change in the environment. I assume that

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The Study of Public Administration

each public decision and action is motivated by and embedded in

values people hold about society and its governance. The inner
segment of the third quadrant is thus the pure type of theory that
focuses on ideological motives (sections 3a, 3b, and 3c). Again I
argue that there are three basic and highly interrelated motives:
democracy, efficiency, and tradition. The body of literature about
these is vast, as is the case with the other inner rings. The
relations among these three may, at first sight, appear to be
wobbly. However, democracy and efficiency have been under-
stood as the classical dilemma between which public decisions
need to steer (Self 1980). And—trivial observation—decisions do
not come out of the blue but are almost always a consequence of
casu quo rooted in past decisions. Hence, while democracy and

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efficiency represent two sides of the same contemporary coin, the
presence of the administrative past (Fesler 1982) provides the
perimeters within which democracy and efficiency were and are
defined. As there are pure theories of democracy (e.g., Dahl
1970), there are pure theories of efficiency (e.g., Simon 1957),
theories about the impact of time (e.g., Bartolini 1993), and
theories about the sequential, hence, dynamic, nature of decision
making (e.g., Lindblom 1959). In section 3A of the outer ring,
research on such topics as equality, citizens and civicness (e.g.,
Almond and Verba 1963; Putnam et al. 1993), and public/admin-
istrative philosophy (e.g., Hodgkinson 1978) can be situated.
Section 3B comprises empirical work on costs and benefits,
rational behavior, managerial philosophy, and so on. The last
section in this quadrant is concerned with research in the field of
administrative history (e.g., Finer 1997; Gladden 1972; Raad-
schelders 1998) and the history of management (e.g., Barley and
Kunda 1992; Wren 1972).

This quadrant calls for a little extra justification. While the

topics of the other quadrants are considered to be part of main-
stream public administration, those of this quadrant may raise
some eyebrows. Many will agree with the observation that the
political theory of administration is essential to a balanced
understanding of the contemporary structure, the functioning, and
the challenges of government. Waldo pointed this out fifty years
ago (Waldo 1984), and yet it seems as if the relation between
democracy, efficiency, and tradition is not identified with main-
stream or hard core public administration. Adams (1992, 370)
suggested that more attention for this relation is necessary:

The tension between a meaningful, democratic politics and an expert,

specialized administration, embedded in our nation's founding and inten-
sified greatly by the flowering of technical rationality barely 100 years ago,
remains at the forefront of any possible claim to legitimacy for public
administration in the American state. An atemporal public administration has

294/J-PART, April 1999

The Study of Public Administration

considerable difficulty even addressing this question, because in its very

essence it is an historical question. . . . Remaining enthralled with modern-
ity, we remain unable to locate ourselves in our present historical circum-
stances, and thus relegate ourselves to issuing "new" calls for science and
rigor on into the future.

Would the identity crisis debate be less prominent and

pressing if we supplemented the rationalist-scientific approach
with more attention to configurations, interpretations, and
cultural context? An historical approach to contemporary prob-
lems in government would make us more sensitive to how value
laden the choices we make are. As Adams suggests this is indeed
indispensable to the legitimacy of government, but too little

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recognized.

The Fourth Quadrant (output: how)

The last quadrant concerns the matter of how these public

decisions are maintained. In the inner ring (4a, 4b, and 4c), I
have situated the three basic activities: defending/protecting,
distributing, and legislating/monitoring. Defending/regulating we
do via the norms and values we all share in our society—call it
social control. In the outer ring (section 4A), we can position
such topics as the army (external protection of territory) and the
police (internal protection of stability [e.g., Bailey 1995; Reiner
1992]). Distributing represents shared convictions about charity
and welfare (state) and civic culture (e.g., Heater 1990). In the
outer ring, we are then focused on such concrete processes as
budgeting and public finance (e.g., Mikesell 1991; Peters 1991),
public service delivery, development aid, and so forth (section
4B). The inner ring of the final segment (section 4C), that of
legislation and monitoring, concerns law and justice (e.g., Rawls
1971) upon which (in the outer ring) rest the activities of the
judiciary, inspection agencies, and so forth (e.g., Cavadino and
Dignan 1996; Hurst 1977; Stojkovic, Kalinich, and Klofas 1996).
With this twelfth element, finally, the circle is complete, and we
are—literally—back to square one.

INTERDEPENDENT QUADRANTS

In this presentation of the study of Public Administration as

an intellectually coherent body of knowledge, I would like to
highlight at least nine features.

First, the bottom part of the framework, quadrants 2 and 3

represent the input side, while the two quadrants at the top repre-
sent the output side. Actors and motives upon which they act pro-
vide the input; the output consists of the actions and the ways in

295/J-PART, April 1999

The Study of Public Administration

which these actions are pursued and monitored. In line with what
I regarded to be important issues of P(p)ublic A(a)dministration
(section 3), the nature of the input varies from country to country
and is dependent upon who participates in decision making within
a particular arena of ideology, practical problems, and tradition.
This is why the question about what P(p)ublic A(a)dministration
should be can materialize in a variety of ways. At its core, how-
ever, P(p)ublic A(administration stands as defined: government
and governance of society.

Second, it is clear that the various elements are interrelated,

since each output element can be analyzed in terms of each input
element. Students of government can and have analyzed budget-

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ing in an historical perspective (e.g., Webber and Wildavsky
1986); the development of organizations in terms of their domi-
nant managerial ideology (e.g., Barley and Kunda 1992); the
origin of the legal/constitutional system of the western world
(e.g., Berman 1983); the development of state government in the
United States (e.g., Garnett 1980); the welfare state as a function
of the input of interest groups (e.g., Flora and Heidenheimer
1990); and the development of political-administrative relations
(e.g., Raadschelders and Van der Meer 1998). While these
examples all concern the section of tradition (3Cc), the reader
easily can relate the other input sections to various output
sections.

Third, in this presentation it is clear that public administra-

tion has roots in and draws upon other studies and disciplines.
Here it is relevant to distinguish between multidisciplinarity and
interdisciplinarity. Both concepts refer to a certain degree of
coherence within a body of knowledge, but neither constitutes an
autonomous discipline. In the case of multidisciplinarity, this
coherence emerges only as a result of focus on the same research
topic (e.g., sociology of government or the politics of govern-
ment). Coherence in the case of interdisciplinarity is based on an
exchange of insights: when the research in a study uses insights,
concepts, theories of other related disciplines. Multidisciplinarity
is predominantly a problem of practical and methodological
nature. What makes Public Administration distinct from other
academic pursuits with an interest in government, though, is the
interdisciplinarity with which it can approach its core object of
study: the what, who, why, and how of public decision making
about collective issues as approached from a variety of relevant
bodies of knowledge in the attempt to acquire higher understand-
ing. This constitutes a major theoretical challenge.

Fourth, this presentation of Public Administration thus

emphasizes that our point of analytical departure cannot be based

296/J-PART, April 1999

The Study of Public Administration

solely on theory that is confined to one approach, because its

core subject (public administration/government/practice) and
concept, Public Administration, is open to many interpretations.
Public Administration seeks to integrate knowledge. Dependent
upon topic, public administration scholars can draw upon a large
body of disciplinary approaches.

Fifth, this framework presents a mix of theory and practice.

The practice of public administration cannot be defined solely by
looking at theory or practice. What constitutes government varies
with time and place, but all prehistoric and historic societies had
a government. An example we all recognize is the matter of what
is considered public and private. This has been a highly relevant

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dichotomy since at least the early nineteenth century. Govern-
ment expands and contracts according to prevailing attitudes
toward market, state, and associations. Hence, practice influences
our theorizing, and this framework seeks to emphasize that (see
also the first feature).

Sixth, this framework does not require commitment to a

particular epistemology or methodology nor does it claim or pro-
vide any commensurability. It is nothing more, and nothing less,
than a means of organizing the study of Public Administration as
an integrated whole. Thus the various topics labeled in this
framework can be analyzed from a variety of approaches such as
interpretative, positivistic/behavioralistic, and postmodernistic
and at different levels of abstraction such as macro societal
issues, organizational issues, and micro issues.

Seventh, this framework does not say anything about the

importance of each topic. They are all relevant to the practice
and to the study, whatever the angle or approach adopted. When
an author claims that one particular feature or approach is more
central to the study than another, we know more about the iden-
tity of the author (i.e., disciplinary background, outlook on
science, ideological preferences) than about the identity of the
study. While I am inclined to argue that public decision making
is the core function that defines government, others might reason
that it is public action that defines government. In other words,
this framework allows us to step into the nature of the study and
the practice from a variety of angles.

Eighth, I believe that with the use of this framework the

differences in the continental-European taxonomical approach and
the Anglo-American practical approach are less important than
what combines them: the interest in government decisions and
their impact upon society.

297/J-PART, April 1999

The Study of Public Administration

The final feature is my claim that there is no topic that is

studied in Public Administration that cannot be fitted into this
framework. Some topics can be situated in a variety of places
within this framework. Obvious examples are ethics (e.g., Rohr
1989), the core values of government (e.g., our Constitution), the
notion of due process, and charity and justice as manifestations of
moral authority. This framework is, therefore, a means to con-
vincingly address our students' legitimate question, What really is
P(p)ublic A(a)dministration? without limiting their choices in this
regard. Waldo has said that we should not teach them what to
think but how to think. What to think is the realm of believers,
dogmatists, sectarians, and totalitarians; how to think is the realm
of teachers and philosophers. The first will seek to organize our

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thoughts for us; the second will show us how we can, but not
how we must, organize our thoughts.

IMPLICATIONS OF THIS FRAMEWORK

There are at least two reasons the development of a unified

body of theory is prohibited for Public Administration: its multi-
disciplinary and interdisciplinary nature and the continuous
changing nature of government and government-society relations.
Time and again American and European publications reviewing
the state of the art have concluded that theory development has
been poor (Perry and Kraemerl986; Rhodes et al. 1995). But the
statement that Public Administration lacks a coherent and unify-
ing theory does not do justice to the study. It is true that a
coherent and unified body of theory does not exist, but this does
not imply that the study lacks identity. That identity, however, is
rooted in the core subject of our study (i.e., what comprises
public administration) rather than in a distinct theoretical and
methodological approach.

Hence, bemoaning the lack of a coherent and unifying body

of theory debases the vast amount of theory available on specific
topics, and it denies the multidisciplinary and the interdiscipli-
nary nature essential to our study. If, indeed, we continue to
strive for a coherent and unifying theory in an inductive manner
we will in effect dig our own grave. Apart from the fact that this
is not desirable from a personal and psychological point of view,
this would be equally undesirable from a cognitive point of view.
We must acknowledge that government and governance, basic to
every type of society from prehistoric tribes to twentieth century
welfare states, are phenomena that run across every segment of
society and touch and encompass our lives in many ways. To stu-
dents of P(p)ublic P(a)dministration, a quest for unity is likely to
be more successful when it starts with societies' complexity, as it
is reflected in the complex structure of government. Moreover,

29S/J-PART, April 1999

The Study of Public Administration

the search for a coherent and unifying theory negates that which
is characteristic of all social and historical sciences: they all deal
with and depart from the reflection and interpretation that are so
basic to human nature. Scholars of P(p)ublic A(a)dministration do
not have to stake a claim to their subject of interest. Instead, they
should draw upon various monodisciplinary approaches to arrive
at a more encompassing (i.e., multi- and interdisciplinary) per-
spective of that huge phenomenon called government (Rutgers
1993). Few will declare themselves against an encompassing per-
spective, but critics could and will argue that this will be very
abstract and far removed from day-to-day reality. Likewise, any
attempt to present Public Administration as a coherent body of
knowledge can be criticized for its oversimplification and reduc-

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tionism, and this article is no different from others in that
respect. But any attempt to link the various topics relevant to our
study cannot but be encompassing.

In this context, it is useful to remember that pursuing an

encompassing approach is not the same as establishing a para-
digm (i.e., one ontological and epistemological stance) for the
study of Public Administration.

I have outlined in this article what I believe to be the

appropriate questions of the study of Public Administration. In
the academic community we differ about the appropriate ways to
answer these questions. Hence, for the moment we work with
" . . . alternative theories or competing candidates for paradigm
status" (Denhardt 1984, 106). The framework I presented in
exhibit 2 is thus not to be regarded as a series of miniparadigms.
The number of empirical studies and theoretical reflections have
increased substantially since the beginning of this century,
testimony to the proliferation of the study of Public Adminis-
tration. We are probably further away than ever from reaching an
elegant closure to the identity crisis of Public Administration
through the development of a comprehensive theory.

Do I imply that all attention to our identity crisis is futile?

From a modernist perspective, I suppose the answer would be
negative, while from a postmodern perspective it would be
affirmative. From an academic perspective, however, this ques-
tion is not relevant. We have to devote part of our academic
endeavors to solely theoretical and methodological issues, to the
identity of the study and the practice, as well as to the state of
the art. Theoretical studies, those that focus on the (normative)
foundations of a study as well as the practice, make for a vibrant
discipline and will provide us with new questions and avenues of
research. Public Administration is neither unified nor fragmented.
It is both and should be both because otherwise it will never be

299/J-PART, April 1999


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